Fugitive, in Full View

Jack Marshall's work is closely attuned to the historical context of our present moment, and uses that long view to make a passionate case for intervention in our contemporary climate of hawkishness, endless war, ecological disaster. Marshall's poetry begins in appreciationfor family, for love, for beautyand its call for political action builds from that place. There are linkages to Osip Mandelstam throughout the collection that signal the kind of protest poetry that Marshall is writingmade up both of appreciation and no uncertain warning. They also propose a kind of kinship between two men who, even as they searched for a sense of home and belonging, were rooted by both history and family. Jack is an immigrant (he was born into a Jewish family in Baghdad) and his mother's home was in Aleppo, Syria. Migration, refugees, and the ongoing devastation in Syria and Iraq are all immediate and personal concerns for him.